It’s not so much the music that’s annoying about college a cappella (though it’s that, too) as the self-satisfied guys, with their matching khakis and quirky vests, singing their hearts out, one dude slapping at his chest. More annoying still is a college a cappella group closing in on 40 — while dealing with marriage, divorce, job loss, hair loss, and kid-having — who reunite to sing at a pal’s wedding in the Hamptons. The men in Bruce Leddy’s cloying comedy don’t seem to have grown up since the “peak experience” of singing their senior show: they play frisbee golf, pants one another, talk about the length of their dicks, get trashed, drool over a Swedish nanny, and call another douche — except that now instead of cheap beer they’re drinking chai-tea martinis. Lewd-talking Molly Shannon stands out; so does Chris Bowers as the sex god. Otherwise, this one’s as cheesy as the Coldplay, John Mayer, and Ben Folds Five numbers the guys sing.

Best in show The Maine Historical Society's Eric Eaton and John Mayer recently received honors from the New England Museum Association for their work on the publications accompanying the exhibit “The City Awakes.”

The Big Hurt: Lightfoot lives! Last week, the world was gripped in the terror of a GORDON LIGHTFOOT death scare when a realistic-looking Twitter obit was picked up by several Canadian papers.

78. Chris Martin We can’t imagine anything lamer than being a colorless vegetarian musician who pokes a frigid aristocratic phony like Gwyneth Paltrow. Wait — yes we can — the life of anyone who listens to Coldplay’s soulless pedestrian garbage rock.

Festival casualties ’08! A young man died of meningitis, which doctors believe he contracted by sharing joints with contagious hippies at the Sierra Nevada World Music Festival.

Risky business I know I can’t be the only person whose ears perked up earlier this year on hearing the chorus of the then-new Ashlee Simpson single “Outta My Head (Ay Ya Ya).”

37. John Mayer You know your stock has fallen when the Star , that bastion of serious journalism, claims that Jennifer Aniston broke up with you because you Twitter too damn much. That’s what Mayer gets for relentlessly spewing nonsense in 140-characters-or-less bursts. And let this be a lesson to all you 40404-fiends: if you’re gonna tell a lady you’re “too busy,” make sure you’re not simultaneously thumbing shit like “ Life is like walking through a funhouse. It’s dark, people are pushing, and you can’t turn around ” onto the Internet. Not just because it’s pathetic. Because she’s following you, dickweed.

Can classical be underground? At least one of the reasons many of us contemporary-music fans don't get into classical music is because it seems like no one wants us to listen to it.

Review: Howling Bells | Radio Wars Australian dream-rock dudes (and dudette) toured North America earlier this year with Coldplay — and like Chris Martin's not-so-merry men, Howling Bells on their sophomore album attempt to dress up what might otherwise be a clutch of dour, namby-pamby white-person ditties with all manner of spicy studio-side textures.

Raised words Maine Historical Society's current exhibit, A Riot of Words , is a fascinating collection of printed posters ranging from early 18 th century broadsides to World War I era color lithographs.

Pop in a hard place I’m crammed into a Berklee practice room with seven out of nine members of the orchestral folk-pop collective the Young Republic, listening to — but mostly laughing at — the awful grooves of a metal outfit down the hall. The Young Republic, "Modern Plays" (mp3) The Young Republic, "Blue Skies" (mp3)

ON CARPENTRY AND COLLEGE | October 20, 2011 Age 30, I quit the Phoenix and ended up with a job as an apprentice to a carpenter. Sawing, chiseling, hammering, nail-gunning, tiling, sanding, slotting, framing, hauling, measuring, and sweeping are less obvious outcomes of an undergraduate career in the liberal arts. College, in strange and unexpected ways, prepared me for this sort of work. And in others, did not prepare me at all.

PHDISASTERS | April 27, 2011 I knew a man pursuing a PhD in literature. His dissertation had to do with humor as a form of dissent in 20th-century literature. And how enthused he was at first! How passionate and excited.